


i feel emphatic about not being static

by dustywords



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, but it's more likely to count as some sort of character study, maybe this will also pass as belated christmas fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 01:54:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustywords/pseuds/dustywords
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shaw is more or less stuck now in the abandoned subway station--and her only entertainment down there features stolen sandwiches, a Christmas tree and hot cocoa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i feel emphatic about not being static

**Author's Note:**

> ok, i know i am late with this little christmas fluff one-shot, but maybe we can all just look the other way and pretend i am not late? cool. 
> 
> this is also pretty much ripped out of the original timeline, because i wanted to have a christmas tree in this story. title taken from "when it comes" by incubus. enjoy!

“Ms. Shaw, are you listening to me?” Finch’s tone suggests that he already knows the answer, which makes Shaw grit her teeth.

“Yes,” she huffs, taking a bite from the apple in her hand. She found it in _Professor Whistler’s_ bag. “I am a prisoner.” Because Samaritan knows who she is and now she’s grounded. Sort of.

“Not a prisoner,” Finch moans and then blinks, trying to find a good substitute for that word. Which is basically non-existent; she isn’t allowed to leave their safe haven underneath the attentive eyes of Samaritan. How is that not being a prisoner.

“It is for your own good, Ms. Shaw,” Finch opts to say, and she only rolls her eyes. This whole talk was pointless to begin with. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry for the inconvenience of yours. I wish I could…” He doesn’t finish the sentence. “Anyway, I brought some books with me, maybe you’ll find something that will suit your taste?”

Shaw takes another forceful bite of the apple and glares at him.

*

“Fusco sponsored this sandwich,” Reese tells her in between bites. They don’t talk about how he almost daily tries to spend his lunch break down here, or how he manages to bring exactly the kind of food she likes.

She thanks him by not asking too many questions.

“You mean you stole his lunch,” she corrects him with a mouthful of sandwich between her teeth.

Something that’s happened very often in the past few days since she’s been forced to stay down here. Funny, how Fusco has suddenly adapted his taste to Shaw’s favorite sandwich.

They stare at each and stop to chew for a second. “Yeah,” Reese slowly agrees, not voicing his thoughts on this particular matter out loud, but Shaw is sure they are on the same page here. 

“What’s with the cut there?” she decides to ask after finishing her lunch and she can’t help the amused tone. She looks at the nasty cut above his left brow. Someone cleaned it and took care of it.

Reese shrugs in his nonchalant way and winces. “Tackled the wrong guy instead of our number.”

“Tough shit.”

*

She only knows it’s snowing when Bear bursts back in with snowflakes in his fur. He jumps around her and barks happily, his tail wagging in the rhythm of his quickened breathing.

“It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, Ms. Shaw,” Finch announces and even risks a small smile in her direction.

 “Yeah,” she mutters, “perfect for a murder.”

He pretends not to have heard that when he turns the various screens on. She doesn’t mind and continues to read _The Gun Seller_ , which has surprisingly little guns in it so far. What fucking moron gave this book that stupid title? 

*

“What’s that?”

“A Christmas tree, Shaw. Surely you keep track what day it is?” She wants to tell Reese and his self-satisfied smirk to shove it elsewhere, but instead she just sighs heavily and gets up from the bed she spent the last two hours cleaning her guns on. She’d do it at a table, but they’re all covered in paper-bullshit Finch brought in from his students.

“I didn’t think you’d care about Christmas,” she tells him, walking over to him. “It’s the 24th December. Where the hell did you get a tree so late?”

“Root,” he just offers as he cuts the ropes through with his army knife. “Looks like the Machine wants us to take it slow for a few days.”

She feels partly justified anger welling up inside her. Not only because of the whole _I drugged you to save you from yourself, Shaw, please believe me_ -bullshit, but also because this tidbit of information reminds her once again how cut off from the world she is down here, in her prison hole.

Ever since she got bored and started to interrupt their investigative aspects of their job with bored commentaries, Finch’s banned her from the com system. He went as far as to secure it with an unknown password. And now, at the mentioning of Root she feels like the left out kid on the school yard. Fuckers.

“Since when is she running this place?” she hisses and steps back from the tree as if it were poisoned.

Reese keeps his knowing smirk up. “She promised to drop by later,” he adds after a few seconds of smiling and staring.

“Yeah, I don’t care.”

“Sure you don’t.” He is polite enough not to point out how she still has access to the tracker of their phones and keeps tabs on all of them.

She hates these nerds so much.

*

(She doesn’t. Which is why she waters the Christmas tree trunk and throws half-heartedly some lametta and light strings on it after Reese left her alone with it.)

*

“I can’t even take you for a walk,” she sighs and scratches Bear behind his ears. His dark eyes look at her and it’s like he gets her. Maybe he does.

The rest of the team still hasn’t returned from their everyday adventures. And Shaw already grew tired of shooting arrows at the archery target that Finch had Reese install a few days ago. (“But please, Ms. Shaw, do me a favor and don’t use loaded guns for this. It’s arrows only.” _Kill joy_.)

Eleven minutes and thirty-two seconds later (no, she didn’t stare at the digital clock on Finch’s desk) the door opens and the only person she really doesn’t want to see (or maybe just for a second to check for possible injuries) steps inside with a black beanie, a long black coat and the most innocent smile she has seen on Root’s face.

Every alarm bell in her system goes off.

“What are you doing here?” She doesn’t bother getting up from the floor, nor does she stop scratching Bear behind his ears. But his attention on Root made his shoulders tense and if it weren’t for Shaw’s hand he’d have made his way towards Root to greet her.

Next time she’ll let him. Maybe.

“I thought it was time to pay my most favorite prisoner a visit.”

Shaw rolls her eyes as a reply.

Then she eyes the big bag in her hands wearily. “Please tell me there’s a rifle for me in that bag because you need me for a top secret mission?” she asks and dammit, she didn’t mean to sound so hopeful.

Root takes her beanie off and flips her hair, placing the bag on Finch’s smallest stack of papers. “I am afraid not today, Sameen. Samaritan is still looking for you and until She doesn’t find a way to get you off their radars again, I’m afraid you’ll have to spend some time down here.” Her smile is smaller this time and there’s a sadness to it that Shaw notices, but she can’t place. Or maybe she doesn’t want to.

Root stares at the sparsely decorated Christmas tree next to the wagon entrance when she takes her coat off. “Someone got...creative?”

“Reese doesn’t know shit about how much decorations you need for a damn Christmas tree.”

“Luckily his life doesn’t depend on this knowledge,” Root snickers, before she opens the bag.

In spite of herself, Shaw gets curious. She’s even on her feet for whatever reason, and how she got so close to Root is a mystery on its own.

“What’s that?”

“A way for you to end me,” Root whispers into her ear with a smile in her voice. “If I let you, that is.”

 _No_.

*

“I’ll take the car.”

“It’s just a game, Sameen.”

“I get the damn car, don’t test my patience.”

“Fine. I’ll take the iron, then.”

“The iron? How lame.”

“But there is a really cute story behind it. It’s how we first met!”

Shaw rolls her eyes and huffs annoyed at Root, whose smile only grows wider. She promises herself to wipe that smile off. She pushes the other figurines away from the Monopoly board and grabs after the box with the money, but Root’s slender fingers stop her. “I’m also the bank,” the hacker tells her with a wink.

“Because you have a calculator in your ear?” It’s a low blow, but she’s trapped down here with nothing but some books, a daily refilled fridge and Finch’s crap. Insulting Root over a silly game is the most entertaining thing that’s happened to her in days, but she’d rather eat Bear’s food than admit that to a living soul.

Root actually fucking pouts at that. “She’s busy with a war, Sameen.” Her tone is serious, but the amusement in her eyes is real, and Shaw is sure that the irritating woman knows exactly how she feels about this game.

She takes her hand out of Root’s grasp and leans back. They’re sitting on the floor and it’s not the most comfortable place to start a game with the nerd that drugged you a few weeks ago, but it isn’t the worst thing either.

“This is going to be so much fun,” Root tells her with a smile while she shuffles the cards.

Shaw is pretty sure they have a slightly different definition of the word “fun”.

*

Three hours later they are sitting on Shaw’s bed looking down at the mess they’ve created; or rather Shaw who refused to pay rent to Root—that woman somehow managed to place a house on the most expensive street.

“I hate Monopoly,” Shaw mutters darkly and kicks Root’s house away with the tip of her shoe. Root just looks at her and there is this weird admiring look in her eyes. She quickly averts her gaze. Where is the Machine and the damn missions when you need them the most?

“She’s working on it,” Root suddenly says. Or maybe not so suddenly, maybe Shaw muttered the last part under her breath and Root, sitting so close that their shoulders are touching, heard it.

“Give Her some time, Sameen.”

“I ‘ve been rotting down here for weeks. Time’s long up,” she huffs, crossing her arms.

Root stares at the ceiling. “It’s complicated to get you back into the game,” she whispers. “But trust me when I say that She’s doing everything She can.”

“Trust you?” Shaw repeats and lifts both brows. “We both know how that worked out,” she whispers darkly. “Been there, done that.”

“You are alive, so yes, trusting me is a wonderful idea.”

“You tricked me!”

Root turns towards her, her face only inches away from hers. “If I had asked you nicely to stay behind, to play nice—would you have listened to me?”

Bear whimpers and runs towards the door. They can both hear the uneven, shuffling sounds of Finch‘s limp coming closer.

Shaw glares at Root.

The answer stares right back at her.

*

“It was never about winning,” Root says and twists her chopsticks around her yakisoba with ease. For a seconds Shaw thinks this is still about the stupid Monopoly game they abruptly ended. “We are barely surviving, winning is as likely as getting the jackpot in the lottery,” she continues with a now full mouth and hums. “With the machine’s help winning the jackpot wouldn’t be even a hard task, though.”

“Can you at least shut up while we eat?” Shaw bites out and chews on her udon noodles.

“I should’ve just dropped the food here and left,” Finch murmurs to himself.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Harry. Shaw and I are just having a conversation.”

Shaw wonders if she could kill a person with a chopstick. She probably could. “Just bring me a knife and we can turn this into a discussion.”

“I like how your mind works,” Root winks and Finch stops chewing altogether to grab his plate, his cup of tea and walk out of the subway wagon.

Root just chuckles and grins at Shaw.

*

Reese comes around 6am the next morning. “Night shift,” he mumbles in her direction when she grumpily stares him down. It took her a while to find into some fitful sleep and now this wannabe-cop falls into the chair and tries to rub the sleepless night out of his eyes.

“Hotels exist for a reason. As does your own place,” she points out, yawns and stretches a little. Her hand doesn’t bump into Bear, who usually sleeps next to her bed. Finch took him last night, because the walk back to his place through the darkness seems less threatening with a dog by his side. Sounded like some fishy excuse to take the dog with him. Whatever.

Reese takes his shoes off. “Is it crazy that I feel more at home down here?”

“We can switch places,” she readily suggests and earns a tired smile from Reese. It’s not even him trying to be condescending, he just really looks like he could use a few days of sleep.

“I‘ve got a couple days off. Fusco seemed happy,” he tells her.

She shrugs. “Good for him. No one there to steal his lunch.”

“He’s leaving town for a few days with his kid.”

Shaw smiles into her pillow. “Good for him,” she repeats, much softer.

“We should do something for tonight,” Reese mumbles, leaning back in the chair and starting to doze off.

Shaw doesn’t reply, just tugs her bed covers closer.

*

Finch and Bear return after noon.

(She isn’t disappointed that the door closes after Finch. She didn’t expect a third person. Why would she even be waiting for someone else to walk through the door?)

“I see, Mr. Reese is taking his much needed break,” Finch notes when he notices Reese resting on the bunk that Shaw currently calls her own. She dragged him over there from his chair after she woke up and saw his back breaking sleeping position on the office chair.

He didn’t even complain about being woken up after he realized where she was taking him. He hasn’t moved for three hours now.

“Yeah, some kids are getting a little old for the party,” Shaw comments with a little smirk and throws Bear his ball, who readily jumps after it.

Finch smiles back. “I am glad your mood improved a little. Maybe a little Monopoly did help,” he muses and pretends to be busy with cleaning his glasses, before his fingers type his password for his computer in. Shaw just glares.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Finch suddenly remembers and turns in his chair around. “Kom hier,” he commands Bear who drops the ball and runs over to him. “Goede hond. Please, Ms. Shaw, I want you to look at something,” he tells her and he looks up to her while he leans over the sitting dog and holds his collar.

Shaw comes slowly closer. “What’s so interesting about that collar?”

“The little action camera I installed there. Modified to keep Samaritan away from it, don’t worry.”

“The purpose of keeping me down here is pretty much to also keep me from worrying about Samaritan, isn’t that right?” She can’t help her bitter tone.

And Finch doesn’t hold it against her. He has no right to do so, anyway. “I thought it would be maybe nice for you to see what the world looks like, even during your absence.”

“And this camera…?”

“Recorded every step Bear made. Which is why I kept taking him home almost every night, Ms. Shaw.”

She purses her lips. “That actually even makes sense,” she admits.

Finch takes the micro SD card out and puts it into an adapter, before plugging it into the SD card slot of his pc. Then he gets up and motions with his hand at his previously occupied chair. “Please, have a seat. I have other matters to attend to, but I am sure this is best enjoyed alone, Ms. Shaw,” he nods and spares a short glance at Reese, who is drooling on her pillow.

Shaw stares at him. “I’ll need a new pillow, Finch.”

“Consider it already purchased, Ms. Shaw.”

She takes a seat and clicks on the first .mp4 file.

*

_“Ms Grooves, do you really think this is a good idea?”_

_“If Shaw can’t go outside to see the world, the world has to come to her,”_ Root replies to him, the camera showing her face at a weird angle. She is looking mainly at Root’s chin and nose. The camera moves around a little, there is rustling and Root looks with a focused expression in her face down at the camera in her hands, right at Shaw.

Finch is a goddamn liar. This wasn’t even his idea and he sure as hell didn’t install it.

“Would you have watched it if I told you who made you this gift?” is Finch’s only comment on that through the com system, to avoid yelling through the abandoned subway station and waking up Reese, who is now snoring lightly.

Shaw grits her teeth and clicks on the next file.

*

There is a total of 17 files and all of them show different parts of New York by daylight and night. Snow is falling in some of them, the noise of traffic interrupted by aggressive honking and howling sirens.

 _“Merry Christmas, Sameen,”_ smiles Root in the darkness of the night. Snowflakes dance around her face. So that’s why she left so eagerly with Finch. 

This woman.

*

They are sitting on the stairs. It’s the furthest Shaw is allowed to go, and the air tastes different here. It’s almost like being outside.

“Did you like my gift?”

Root nips at her hot cocoa and smiles softly when Shaw takes a careful sip of hers. She brought the two mugs and suggested to leave the station, while Finch and Reese are busy with some nerd-stuff. A number, obviously. But she’s sitting on the bench on the sidelines of that match, so she doesn’t care too much about that.

“I feel a little less like Anne Frank, if that’s any help,” she grumbles into her hot cocoa and sniffs. The steps they are sitting on are cold.

Root laughs and places her mug next to her. She sits one step below Shaw to allow them to be almost on eye level. “The machine helped me to get it secured against Samaritan.”

“So that’s what you two nerds were busy doing for the past few weeks?”

“For now...it’s the best we can do. I am sorry,” she sighs, leaning closer. “I wish I could have offered you a better solution.” Her hand finds Shaw’s cheek and it’s not the contact that makes Shaw clench her free hand into a fist, it’s the fact that she allows the hand to linger for almost four seconds there, before she jerks her head away.

“This war is about to get ugly,” Root continues, unfazed by Shaw’s reaction.

Her hand drops to Shaw’s knee seemingly by accident.

Shaw stares at it, then back at Root and then she sighs. “I don’t want to stay here,” she points out, ignoring the warmth on her leg and the thumb drawing circles through the fabric of the black denim pants.

“One word and I am ready to join this war.”

“That’s exactly the opposite of what I want,” Root shakes her head and Shaw ignores the way she speaks only about what she wants, not about the entire team, not  even the Machine. Her words burn in her chest like some good, matured scotch. “You won’t be down here forever.”

“You better be right.” Shaw hesitates before allowing the tips of her fingers touch Root’s thumb on her knee.

If someone asks, she did this to stop this woman from doing any more circles.

But judging by Root’s warm smile, she knows damn well what’s up.

 _Ugh_.


End file.
